Noteworthy Affection
by queen of the moment
Summary: Every day Arthur receives a note from a stranger.


Every day Arthur finds a note.

He never can figure out who's leaving them; his secretary swears up and down that it's not her, the mail boy swears the same, and no one else has daily access to his office. The whole situation drives him absolutely batty.

They started a few months ago; one day Arthur came into work to find a yellow sticky note pinned to a pile of papers he had left out the night before. '_Don't work too hard or you're going to get sick_.' Arthur had been confused by the note, but he figured it was his secretary's doing and dropped it into a drawer with the intention of forgetting about it until he next cleaned out his desk.

But the next morning he finds another note stuck to his computer screen. It's blue this time and it reads, '_That tie is atrocious, who let you out of the house looking like that?_' Arthur grumbles with annoyance; crumpling up the note and dropping it into the wastebasket. An hour later he rescues it; smoothing it out carefully before putting it in the drawer with the first one.

Months have gone by and Arthur continues to find a note every day. They're stuck to windows, lamps, bookcases, pressed inside drawers and under chairs; once Arthur had even found one inside his favorite mug moments before he poured boiling water into it.

Sometimes there are presents too; when Arthur came back the day after Christmas, he found a box of cookies and a card. On New Year's there was a flute of flat champagne, then on Valentine's Day there was a small box of chocolate, and on one rainy day there was an umbrella; the note attached reading '_I know that you're too much of a fool to remember to bring an umbrella, so here: take mine._'

Arthur keeps every note for a reason that he won't let himself recognize. His desk drawer is overflowing with them, and yet he can't bring himself to throw them out. The silly little scraps of paper have become a part of his life, and for some reason Arthur looks forward to coming into work every day just because of them. He even notices that they have a pattern; yellow for advice, blue for insults, and green for compliments. These days, the majority of them are green.

Today, Arthur had to come in early for a business call. It was a few hours before the company officially opened and so Arthur had expected his floor to be dead. That's why he was incredibly surprised to see a light on in his office. But after a moment he shrugged it off, figuring it was just his secretary; he had told her that she didn't need to come in early for him, but she must have come anyway.

He had to walk through her office to get to his, and he noticed that everything was still the way it was when she had left the night before. He pushed his door open, alarmed that there was an intruder. He came to an abrupt halt when he noticed the man sitting in his desk chair and pressing something to his stapler. Arthur could vaguely recall seeing him a few times before, but he had never learnt the man's name since he worked on a different floor. He had no reason to be in Arthur's office, unless he was the man who wrote the notes.

The man's head snapped up when Arthur walked in, but other than that he couldn't move. He had been leaving Arthur notes every day for months, and he had never even come close to being caught before. Finally he broke eye contact to glance at the sticky note. Of course, today was the day he got caught.

He suddenly decided that the best course of action would be to take the note back, but when Arthur noticed what he was trying to do he stalked over to his desk and snatched the sticky note up; not bothering to read it just yet. The intruder looked up at him, smiling guiltily before speaking. "Ah, I suppose I should introduce myself? I'm Francis Bonnefoy. I work on the sixth floor and I'm the one who's been leaving the notes."

As he spoke, Arthur looked down at the sticky note (pink this time; they were never pink) and on it, in swirly, looped handwriting were three words. '_I love you._' He looked up and cleared his throat. "I'm Arthur Kirkland and it's a pleasure to finally meet you."


End file.
